


Ghosted.

by AntiChri5



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Depression, Loneliness, ghosting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 10:59:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14307210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntiChri5/pseuds/AntiChri5
Summary: Chloe waits for a message that isn't coming, in remembrance of a promise forgotten.





	Ghosted.

Chloe stared at her phone.

And wondered why.

Day after day. Week after week. Month after month.

Year after year.

Chloe stared at her phone.

Waiting for a message that would never come.

From a friend who had forgotten her.

Sometimes she managed to ignore it. Focus on her own life, her own shit.

Then, an eternity later, it would come roaring back. Prompted by a random thought, a conversation remembered, the rerun of a tv show much discussed. And there it was again. An empty echoing nothing where a friendship used to be.

And then the questions come, one by one. Was it something I said? Something I did? Did I cross some line I didn’t know about? Did I fail her? Was I not a good enough friend? Could I have done more, been more, been _better_? Or, if I am so casually tossed aside, was our friendship ever real? Was it as important to her as it was to me, as she said it was to her? Or was it a fantasy, a ghost of projections and assumptions, disappearing in an instant in the light of day?

Or maybe something happened. A bus or a disease or a maniac with a knife. There are a hundred ways the world could have taken her away. What if Chloe was an asshole, sitting there stewing in anger for Max being cold in the ground?

It doesn’t take long. Google is a more reliable friend then the one she was seeking. A tweak on a name here, a dig through an abandoned profile there, and she finds enough. Enough to find her. Enough to know abandonment.

There was no accident. No easily understood reason. The world didn’t step between you. Nothing took her away. She is happy and healthy and whole. Still doing the things they used to do together. Just without Chloe.

Was there a replacement? A new relationship sweeping in to replace the old? Someone somehow so much better at friendship that it turns what you had into so much dust in the wind?

It would be so easy to reach out. Even just to ask why. A minute or two, a few words, a message sent. But Chloe doesn’t. She holds back. Whatever Max’s reasons, that bond was severed. Or left to wither to nothing. A choice was made.

She feels grotesque, all of a sudden for failing to respect that. This whole night of reflection and research suddenly cast as a filthy, furtive grubbing at something that had sought escape. An attempt to drag back someone who had turned away. Clingy, desperate and depraved. Privacy violated in the desperate need to know.

And so the message isn’t sent. The question that had been burning into her mind for three years continues to go unanswered. Hopefully, one day, it would fizzle out.

Chloe moves on. She has a life. But, denied the closure she needs, every now and then.......

Chloe stares at her phone.

And wonders why.

**Author's Note:**

> Goodbye, Alexis.


End file.
